English version of “Épopèes,
hymnes et lettres,"the first part of which appeared as pp. 248-256
in Jacques Briend and Michel Quesnel, eds., Supplément
au Dictionnaire de la Bible, fascicule 72. Paris: Letouzy & Ané,
1999 (to be continued in next fascile).

Epics, Hymns, and Letters

Piotr Michalowski
University of Michigan

This chapter provides an overview of three different groups of main
dialect Sumerian language literary compositions: epics, hymns, and letters.
The definition of the categories covered here is still a matter of some
debate, and depends very much on how one conceptualizes concepts of genre,
modern as well as ancient. The labels used here are the traditional ones
that have acquired a folk systematization in Assyriology. Most often they
are invoked in an intuitive manner, sometimes with reference to an encyclopedia
of literary theory, but rarely have they been subject to systematic scrutiny
(see, however, Vanstiphout 1986).

Epics

The category of "epic" is one of the more controversial in Assyriology.
A variety of texts have been included under this label over the years,
but the definition of the term, as well as its applicability to Mesopotamian
writings, are somewhat questionable (see, in general, the studies published
in Vogelzang and Vanstiphout 1992). The term "epic" has many anachronistic
connotations for contemporary readers, invoking nationalism, ethnic and
religious domination, opinions about poetic style, as well as historiographic
notions such the existence of a "golden age." It is highly unlikely that
all of these have a direct bearing on the interpretation of Sumerian "epic"
poems (Michalowski 1992).

In the traditional classification of Sumerian texts, there are nine
compositions that are included under the category of "epic." All of these
compositions concern three legendary rulers of the city of Uruk: Enmerkar,
Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh. The two Enmerkar tales, Enmerkar and the
Lord of Aratta (ELA, Cohen 1973) and Enmerkar and Ensuhkeshdana
(EE,
Berlin 1979) describe different episodes in the protracted struggle between
Uruk and the mythical Iranian city of Aratta. This urban name was used
as a complex symbol of otherness, formulated as a reverse mirror image
of Uruk. Both cities were represented as enormous in size, as paragons
of wall-encompassed urbanism, and both were said to be ruled by the same
goddess, Inanna. Their struggles always ended with the victory of Sumer,
with Inanna’s choice of Uruk as her main residence, and with an implied
assertion of the cultural superiority of Mesopotamian civilization. The
struggle between Uruk and Aratta was not settled by arms, but by means
of intellect and wit. In ELA the rulers of the two exchanged riddles, while
an increasingly exhausted messenger had to cross the dangerous mountain
ranges between them. To help the envoy with his task, the Uruk king invented
writing in a flash, and sent his last message in the form of a written
letter. The Iranian ruler looked furiously at the new artifact, and his
incomprehension turned to despair as he realized the superiority of the
now newly literate Sumerian civilization, and the day belonged to Uruk.

By contrast, the action of EE was centered not on a contest of royal
wit, but on the conflict of magical practitioners who acted as champions
for the two lands. After certain preliminary events, some of which are
difficult to understand, the narrative turns to the final conflict. As
a result of the machinations of the Aratta representative, the herds of
the Sumerian city of Eresh no longer provide milk. A pair of twin shepherds
preys to the Sun God for help and this leads to an apparent contest between
the Aratta magician and an old woman from Sumer. The former catches some
creatures in a river, but even larger creatures caught by the old woman
immediately eat them. The losing magician is thrown in the river and Uruk
is once again victorious.

The Old Babylonian Lugalbanda texts have narrative connections with
the Enmerkar stories, but differ from them both in substance and in tone.
There has been some debate as to the number of these tales, but we shall
assume here that there was only one long composition of which Lugalbanda
and the Mountain Cave formed the opening, and Lugalbanda and Anzu
the concluding part (Wilcke 1969). The action takes place during he reign
of Enmerkar, but the hero is the future king Lugalbanda who would, in turn,
be the father of Gilgamesh in some traditions. Unlike the Enmerkar "epics,"
the Lugalbanda story takes place during an actual military campaign against
the Iranian city. The expedition is lead by seven brothers, together with
Lugalbanda, the youngest of them all (perhaps a play on the etymology of
his name: "junior king/leader"). When the hero falls sick, he has to be
left behind in a cave, with provisions to get him by. He obtains the favor
of the gods by making offerings, and manages to survive in the mountain
wilderness. In the second part of the story, known as Lugalbanda and
Anzu, the Urukean decides to obtain the favor of the mythical lion
headed eagle, Anzu, by showering favors on its young. The bird rewards
him by providing him with magical speed; he is then able to quickly traverse
the mountain ranges and join his fellow countrymen who are camped in the
siege of Aratta. He rejoins his brothers, and when the Uruk king Enmerkar
seeks a volunteer who would return to his capitol and obtain Inanna’s instructions
for victory, only Lugalbanda rises to the occasion. In doing this he earns
the enmity of his brothers, but, deaf to their taunts, he uses his new
magical powers to once again skip over the mountains with great speed.
He runs back and forth between Aratta and Uruk, bringing back Inanna’s
message and assuring victory for his king.

As can readily be seen, all these texts share the theme of conflict
with an eastern foreign power, symbolized by a mythical land that was separated
from Sumer by treacherous mountains. The victories are always symbolic,
rather than military, and this particular cycle, more than any other group
of texts, provides us with a native view of the place of Mesopotamian civilization
in the world. Whether or not this is a partial ideological perspective
that was more or less limited to this kind of writing, as opposed to, let
us say, the royal inscriptions that extol military success, one cannot
say at present. In other words, it is impossible to determine if such representations
are generic. The narrative focus on intelligence and cultural superiority
as a means of dominating the Other, which, in the late third and early
second millennia, was primarily located to the east, in the highlands of
Iran.

The Gilgamesh tradition is much more complex. There are five Sumerian
narratives about this semi-divine cultural hero: Gilgamesh and Huwawa
(GH, a long and a sort version; Edzard 1990, 1991, and 1993), Gilgamesh
and the Bull of Heaven (GBH, Cavigneaux and al-Rawi 1993), Gilgamesh,
Enkidu and the Netherworld (GEN, Shaffer 1963), Gilgamesh and Agga
(GA, R` mer 1980, Katz 1993),
and The Death of Gilgamesh (DG, Cavigneaux and Al-Rawi, forthcoming).
Unlike the relatively monothematic "epics" about his Uruk predecessors,
which center on the "matter of Aratta" (Vanstiphout 1983), the Gilgamesh
tales differ from one another in thematic orientation, grammatical and
compositional structure, in length, as well as in poetic diction. They
also occupy a different intertextual space in Mesopotamian tradition. Lugalbanda
was never again the subject of literary creation, and Enmerkar was remembered
only marginally in unrelated Akkadian materials from the first millennium
(Picchioni 1981: 102-109). In contrast, the figure of Gilgamesh was the
subject of a variable textual tradition that continued to the last days
of cuneiform writing and even beyond. The relationship between the Old
Babylonian Sumerian materials and contemporary as well as later Akkadian,
Hittite, and Hurrian language Gilgamesh compositions is extremely complex,
and lies well beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice it to say that only
the first three of the compositions enumerated above (GH, GBH, and GEN)
are recapitulated in the Akkadian versions, but they are quite different
in their new garb. Moreover, the degree of alteration differs in each case.
Part of GEN was translated literally and incorporated as the last tablet
of the first millennium twelve-tablet recension, but GH and GBH were transformed
in many details from the Sumerian versions that we have. The Death of
Gilgamesh, on the other hand, which has no Akkadian counterpart, provides
us with a completely different insight into the relationships between the
roughly contemporary second millennium Akkadian and Sumerian language tales
about the Uruk hero. In a section describing the deeds of Gilgamesh are
enumerated episodes that are known only in the Akkadian "epic," including
the meeting with the survivor of the flood story. We cannot know, at present,
if we should conclude that there were other, thus far unrecovered, Sumerian
Gilgamesh stories, or if the multilingual scribes of the second millennium
did not distinguish between traditions that were written down in different
languages.

The tales about the Early Dynastic kings of Uruk have survived in versions
dating from the Old Babylonian period. There is an unpublished manuscript
of Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave that was inscribed during in
Ur III times in the city of Nippur, and an even older story about the same
character is known from a tablet written around 2600 BC in Abu Salabikh
(Jacobsen 1989). The latter is a short tale that recounts the courtship
and union of Lugalbanda with the goddess Lama Ninsumuna (or Ninsuna), an
episode that is not known in any later version. Although a divine Gilgamesh
with chthonic connections was already worshipped in the Early Dynastic
period, the earliest narrative about him is a fragmentary Nippur Ur III
manuscript of GBH. The two Ur III tablets allow us to push back the "epic"
tradition as far as the beginning of the second millennium, but no further.
There are essentially two points of view on the date of these literary
works. There are those who view them as authentic depictions of Early Dynastic
Mesopotamia and Iran, albeit altered through time and filtered through
mythical and epic ways of seeing and telling. Some historians and archaeologists
have used these stories to reconstruct the political structures of early
Sumer, to articulate theories of trade, of cultural and political interactions
with highland Iran, and even to debate the historical geography of the
area in Early Dynastic times. There is a growing consensus, however, that
much of this material was composed or organized in its present form during
the Ur III period as part of the ideological transformation of Mesopotamian
ideas of royalty, and that they were part of the foundation myth of the
dynasty. The ruling house of Ur actually originated from Uruk and continued
to have close ties to that city. Shulgi, the second member of the dynasty,
proclaimed his own divinity as part of a complex reaction to the ill-portending
death of his father in battle. Shulgi’s father had already expressed his
connections with his ancestor Gilgamesh, but the son took this tradition
further, claiming to be the offspring of the union of Lugalbanda and Ninsumuna,
and therefore the brother of Gilgamesh. The recourse to an eponymous human
father and a goddess mother provided the explanation for the mortality
of the divine king. A literary elaboration of the consequences of this
genealogy is to be found in the Death of Gilgamesh, as well as in
a related poem known by its modern name as the Death of Ur-Namma, which
described the burial of Shulgi’s father. Both texts were central to the
complex concretisation of the charter myth of the dynasty.

The tale of Gilgamesh and Huwawa has now been fully reconstructed
in a definitive edition by Edzard. The story begins with a decision by
Gilgamesh to go into the eastern mountains to seek out the "cedar" forest,
to cut down trees and bring the timber back to Uruk. His sidekick Enkidu
reminds him that the forest is the domain of the Sun God Utu, and that
it is guarded by the supernatural creature named Huwawa. After obtaining
Utu’s permission, the two heroes, accompanied by fifty young men from their
city, proceed on their mountain quest. After a long journey, during which
they both have ominous dreams, they reach the land of Huwawa and start
cutting down the trees for transport to Sumer. Huwawa confronts them and
Gilgamesh tricks him into letting down his seven protective auras. At one
point the Uruk king offers him two of his sisters in marriage, a ruse that
undoubtedly was meant to invoke images of dynastic marriages between the
kings of Sumer and the rulers of Iranian border kingdoms, while at the
same time satirizing the naïve mountain creature who actually believed
the offer to be true. Huwawa falls for the trick, lets his auras down and
loses his life. Although at one point Gilgamesh takes pity on the poor
creature, it does no good, and his servant Enkidu cuts off his head. As
a memento of this, the god Enlil distributes the creatures’ auras among
various elements, the forests, the rivers, and the canebrakes, as a sign
for all times of what had happened in the mountains. The central motivation
for these events is the fundamental early Mesopotamian ideological concept
of "establishing one’s name/fame." Fame and remembrance, as well as descendants
and the funerary cult, were the prime metaphors for eternal life and therefore
the motivation for the deeds of great kings. GH is a central meditation
on such matters, and it is not without irony and even veiled critiques
of the reckless and heartless act of rulers, who exploit their families,
especially their women, who plunder foreign lands and commit murder to
further their aims. It is important to remember that Huwawa, to the Mesopotamians,
was no monster, but a divine guardian who had a proper, benign role to
play in the structure of the universe. It is therefore of great interest
that the poets of Sumer used him as a way of critiquing their kings treatment
of eastern lands, of diplomatic marriages, and of ruthless murder.

The compilers of the Akkadian Gilgamesh "epic" adopted the Sumerian
tale about Gilgamesh and Huwawa relatively faithfully. This contrasts
with the story of Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven which, while
clearly related to the corresponding episode in the Akkadian narrative,
was, in essence, quite different. The story is still incomplete, and the
general plot outline is difficult to summarize. The cause of the initial
conflict between Gilgamesh and Inanna appears to be an injunction by the
goddess forbidding the Uruk king from rendering judgement in the courtyard
of her temple Eanna. Gilgamesh pays no attention to her demands and does
as he wishes, whereupon Inanna forces her father An to send down the Bull
of Heaven to ravish the land. Her father is reluctant, but her threats
have their effect, and the animal, which appears to represent some astral
phenomenon, wrecks havoc on Sumer. Gilgamesh and Enkidu finally manage
to subdue the beast, kill him, and in an act of great hubris cast his body
parts in the faces of the gods. There are many differences between the
Sumerian narrative and the later Akkadian version of this episode. Most
important, there is not a trace in the earlier version of any sexual attraction
of Inanna towards the semi-divine hero, nor of his rejection of her advances,
themes that are the main motifs in the Akkadian episode.

The Old Babylonian Nippur version of Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld,
the
final Sumerian story that was incorporated into the Akkadian poem, is almost
fully preserved. This version covered more than 300 lines of text; there
is also part of a slightly different Ur recension of undetermined length.
The narrative is the most complex among the Gilgamesh tales, and although
the composition can be almost completely reconstructed, many interpretive
problems remain. The story begins in mythical time, after the creation
of the universe when a great cosmic storm uproots a sacred tree. Inanna
finds the tree and takes it back to her city Uruk, where she plants it
in her garden. Inanna was waiting for the tree to reach maturity, so that
she could cut it down and use it to make furniture. Many years passed,
and three mythical creatures came to dwell in the tree: a snake in the
roots, the Anzu bird in the top branches, and the phantom virgin Kiskillila
in the trunk. Seeking help to evict these unwanted tenants, the goddess
recounted the whole story to her brother, the sun god Utu, but received
no satisfaction. She then turned to Gilgamesh, and once again recounted
the tale. The hero, here called her "brother," took up her cause and killed
the snake, thus driving out the other two creatures. He then cut down the
tree, made furniture for Inanna, as well as two implements for himself.
These two objects, ellag (Akk. pukku) and E.KW
D (Akk. mekkf), usually
translated as "hoop" and "driving stick," seem to be implements from a
game, but they have complex martial and sexual connotations as well. After
an episode that is difficult to understand, it appears that the objects
had fallen down to the netherworld. Gilgamesh cries out a lament, and his
sidekick Enkidu offers to retrieve the fallen objects. Gilgamesh then provides
him with detailed instructions for the journey, but Enkidu disregards the
advice, and is captured in the netherworld. The king of Uruk begs Enlil
for help, but is rejected. He then turns to Enki, who agrees to assist
him in the matter. The god of magic has the sun god make a hole in the
netherworld and bring up the spirit of Enkidu. The latter then provides
his friend with a long description of the underworld, and the text abruptly
comes to an end. The first millennium Akkadian version lacks the mythological
motifs that open the story, and only begins with line 172, which is the
third line of the hero’s lament over his lost objects, but also includes
additional passages that are not found in the earlier Sumerian version.
Perhaps most curious of all is the fact that it is a translation but without
the original text. By this time Sumerian literary compositions circulated
in bilingual form, with Akkadian translations. There are only a handful
exceptions to this rule, and chief among them are GEN and the Akkadian
language Descent of Ishtar, adapted from the Sumerian Inanna’s
Descent to the Netherworld. It may be pure coincidence that the Gilgamesh
story shares many structural and thematic elements with this Inanna text.

The shortest of these stories is Gilgamesh and Agga, which is
told in a mere 100 lines, while the other tales in the cycle occupy anywhere
from 300 to 600 lines. The story line is so elliptical and hermetic that
any interpretation has to rely on assumptions about prior adventures, unspoken
events, and much guesswork. The narrative takes place during a siege of
Uruk by the army of Agga, king of the northern city of Kish. Gilgamesh
appeals to the elders of his city, who refuse to fight, and then to the
young men, who are eager to follow him into battle. After an episode in
which the men of Kish ridicule the Uruk leader, the latter appears on the
city wall, and his divine heroic charisma is sufficient to strike down
the whole army of Kish. Agga is captured, but Gilgamesh lets him go, with
reference to a "previous favor." In order to explain this strange turn
of events, scholars have often been forced to reconstruct an otherwise
unattested former narrative encounter between the protagonists, during
which Agga must have spared Gilgamesh. None of this makes very much sense
to us, and much effort has been put into forcing the story into modern
narrative patterns. One should not rule out the possibility that this is
a somewhat later parody of some of the main motifs of the other Gilgamesh
tales, written when ideas of divine kingship were somewhat obsolete. It
is possible that the "previous favor" actually refers to an episode in
GH and that the scene in which the hero’s outrageous "charisma," or "aura,"—the
same attribute that in sevenfold fashion protected Huwawa—razed the armies
of Kish, is an outright assault on an obsolete royal ideology.

The final text of this series is the story of the Death of Gilgamesh.
Although this composition remains incomplete, the general narrative is
clear. It tells of the hero who lies sick on his deathbed and cannot ever
rise again. He has dreams in which the gods recount his great deeds and
tell him of the inevitable fate that now awaits him. Gilgamesh is reminded
of his search for the survivor of the flood, Ziusudra, who alone among
mortal attained eternal life. He is reminded of the inevitability of death,
an event that even a son of a goddess cannot evade. He is to now go to
the Great City, where he will dwell in the elite company of dead high priests
and priestesses, his family, friends, as well as his officers and soldiers.
The dreams are interpreted for him and then, after a great storm that parts
the waters, a tomb is built for him on the bottom of the Euphrates. In
a passage that has many similarities with the Death of Ur-Namma,
Gilgamesh makes offerings to Ereshkigal, the mistress of the underworld.
The composition it preserved in at least two quite different versions,
from Nippur and Me-Turan, but the main thrust of both seems to be the same:
even semi-divine kings are mortal. This is undoubtedly one of the Ur III
Gilgamesh creations and it was most probably connected with the Uruk funerals
as well as the ancestor cults of the kings of that dynasty.

Hymns

Roughly speaking, the modern word hymn is used as a designation for
most poetic, non-narrative main dialect Sumerian texts extolling gods,
goddesses, kings, and temples. For the sake of this discussion we shall
retain the traditional labels, although the category of hymn is the most
diffuse of the text types discussed in this chapter, and there is much
to be said for a complete revision of the terms now in use. It is customary
to divide Sumerian hymns into three broad categories: hymns to temples,
to deities, and royal hymns. The latter are further subdivided into hymns
addressed directly to kings, royal hymns of self-praise, and hymns to deities
on behalf of earthly rulers. It is difficult to establish if there was
a native term that encompassed all, or a large range of these kinds of
texts. The word that most closely fits this is èn-du.

In modern scholarship the "hymns" constitute the best known, and most
intensely studied sector of Old Babylonian main dialect Sumerian literary
texts. We owe this to the late Adam Falkenstein (eg. 1959, Falkenstein
and von Soden 1953) and his students, among them W. H. P. R`
mer and C . Sj`
berg, whose pioneering studies provided the foundation for works by later
generations of scholars such as J. Klein, D. Riesman, C. Ludwig, and S.
Tinney.

Temple Hymns

Among the earliest Mesopotamian literary texts there is a long compilation
of short hymns to the deities and temples of various Sumerian cities (Biggs
1974:45-56). This Early Dynastic (c. 2600 BCE) composition is known from
multiple copies from the city of Abu Sal~b§kh,
although it is doubtful that the text was composed there. From the same
city we also have a fragment of a composition known from later redactions,
the hymn to the temple of the goddess Ninhursaga at Kesh (Biggs 1971).

The standard Old Babylonian school curriculum included a variety of
poems that one could very well call Atemple
hymns," although much depends on the criteria one uses for this classification.
The formal characteristics of all of these texts are diverse, and sometimes
they have been ascribed to other categories. One example, which concerns
the building and blessing of the temple of Enki in Eridu (Al Fouadi 1969),
has been variously labeled as the Eridu Hymn, Enki=s
Journey to Nippur, as well as the Hymn to Enki=s
Temple in Eridu. This 129 line composition contains a narrative describing
how in primeval time the god of wisdom built his temple, consecrated it,
and then traveled by boat to Nippur, where he threw an elaborate banquet
for the great gods; after much ceremony and much beer Enlil blessed the
city and temple of his son. This is a very different composition than the
one that was composed in honor of Enlil=s
temple in Nippur (Kramer 1957). Although some consider this temple the
chief shrine of the land, the Hymn to the Ekur is known only in
one copy. Still another hymnic composition in honor of the city of Nippur
might be mentioned in this context, an incomplete poem found at Ur, which
likewise situates the founding of the city in primeval times (Gadd and
Kramer 1963 no. 118). Two very different texts that are usually considered
classic Atemple hymns:" the Hymn
to the Temple at Kesh, and the Collection of Temple Hymns supposedly
written, or compiled by, Enheduana, priestess of the Moon God in Ur, and
daughter of king Sargon of Akkad (Sjöberg, Bergman and Gragg 1969).
The former text is already known from Early Dynastic sources, the latter,
although purported to be earlier, is attested only in Ur III and Old Babylonian
copies. The first poem praised Kesh, a city which, like Eridu, seems to
have lost much of its political importance after the ED period, whereupon
it remained only a ceremonial and pilgrimage center. The hymn contains
an elaborate, highly structured depiction of the building of the central
shrine in the city, described in sections marked as Ahouses,@
or Atemples.@
In contrast, Enheduana=s ACollection@
consists of forty-two short hymns of varying length, ranging from seven
to twenty-three lines, extolling the glory of the major shrines of Sumer
and Akkad. The geographical order follows a general south-to-north orientation,
beginning with Eridu and ending with Akkad, followed by a final hymn to
temple of the goddess of writing. Other texts may turn out to belong to
his category, including two recently published incomplete compositions
from Uruk (Cavigneaux 1996: 56-57).

Other fragmentary texts that mention the various temples of Inanna,
or the temple of her vizier Nin-shubur appear to be similar in nature,
at least from the thematic point of view, but they could well be part of
longer compositions that belonged to other categories.

The longest early Sumerian literary composition, the poetic description
of the building of the abode of the god Ningirsu by Gudea, has sometimes
been described as a "temple hymn " (Alster 1992:38). The text was found
in Girsu, inscribed on two large clay cylinders (Edzard 1997); it is the
longest early Sumerian literary composition currently known. Although there
have been speculations about a lost third part, and there are a few fragments
that do not seem to fit into the cylinders that we have, all indications
are that the text we have is fairly complete. The poem describes how king
Gudea had a dream, in which the god Ningirsu demanded the building of the
Eninnu, his temple in Girsu. The king traveled to the temple of his divine
mother, who interpreted his nocturnal visions. In another incubated Gudea
he asked Ningirsu for confirmation of his desires, and the god told him
in no uncertain terms, this time directly, in less metaphorical terms,
languages of his demand for a new temple. The rest of the narrative consists
of a detailed poetic description of the preparations, ritual as well as
practical, for the construction of the new divine abode, followed by an
equally detailed narration of the building activities and the inauguration
of the shrine.

Royal Hymns

The first large group of royal hymns originated during the rule of the
kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112-2004). Scribes working for later
rulers imitated, developed, and sometimes tried to recreate the form by
reacting against it, but the Ur III hymns, particularly the numerous poems
glorifying king Shulgi, constituted the "classic" exemplars of this kind
of text, down to the end of the Old Babylonian period. The hymns were originally
composed for specific cultic state occasions, and some of them survived
as school texts in modified form. A highly plausible theory links the original
context of most royal hymns with celebrations announcing the promulgation
of year names (Frayne 1981). This theory therefore links narrative elements
that are usually considered separately: the non-literary year formulae
that were used to date everyday documents, monumental royal inscriptions,
and ceremonial hymns, many if which were preserved in the schools of Sumer
and Akkad.

The oldest royal hymn, or perhaps better the hymn that mentions the
earliest Mesopotamian ruler, was dedicated to Gudea, the king of the state
of Lagash, whose reign probably overlapped with that of Ur-Namma, the founder
of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Chiera 1934 no. 36). This single exemplar from
Nippur is a hymn to the goddess Ba=u
and invokes the Atrue shepherd
Gudea.@ It has been suggested
that another hymn to the same goddess (Gadd 1931: 39ff.) was written on
behalf of a much earlier king of Lagash, Entemena, who might be mentioned
in the text under the name Lumma, but this identification has been seriously
questioned (Hallo 1963a). These two early texts require one to inquire
if there was not a developed tradition of royal hymn prior to the Ur III
dynasty. Since almost all the literature composed prior to the reign of
the kings of Ur was discarded from the school curriculum, that is undoubtedly
plausible, but must remain within the realm of speculation until more earlier
texts are found.

It has been argued that royal hymns provide evidence of a common political
consciousness in Sumer and that the priests of Nippur honored only one
ruler at a time with such compositions (Hallo 1963b). This theory has gained
wide acceptance, and there is indeed much to support it. One problem that
comes to the fore in such a discussion is, once again, the double articulation
of all Sumerian literary texts, that is the original context of composition
and the possibly unrelated decision to include a text in the school curriculum
of Nippur and other cities. One might also add that there may have been
additional weeding of the curriculum, but we have no indication of the
survival rate of school texts leading up to the time of king Samsu-iluna
of Babylon (1749-1712 B.C.), that is to the date of the bulk of the surviving
Old Babylonian Nippur school tablets. It is often stated that the corpus
of rulers recognized by the Nippur priests by means of hymns spans the
full range from Ur III to the end of the Old Babylonian dynasty. A closer
examination reveals that this is not exactly the case. In Nippur itself
the Ur III rulers are well represented, as are the first seven as well
as the tenth of the fifteen rulers of the Old Babylonian Isin dynasty (R`
mer 1965). The other dynasties of this time period are almost completely
absent from the tablets found in the city of Enlil. Most of the hymns to
rulers of Larsa come from Ur, and some of them may not be school texts
at all, but survivals of actual cultic ceremonies in the city. Only a hymn
to Gungunum, the first major ruler of the Larsa dynasty, as well as a fragment
of a Rim-Sin hymn were discovered at Nippur. Likewise, only two kings of
Babylon were celebrated in the Nippur schools: Hammurapi and Samsu-iluna.
The lack of later kings of the dynasty is understandable, as the school
texts from southern cities end abruptly with the end of the latter king’s
reign, but their predecessor’s exclusion remains to be explained.

Even if we keep in mind the complex issues of ancient selection for
preservation, of the vagaries of transmission, of selective preservation,
as well as of the aleatoric nature of modern discovery, it is still possible
to discern individual features in the hymnic self-presentation of early
second millenium Mesopotamian kings. A few examples will have to suffice.
The compositions associated with the first king of the Ur III dynasty,
Ur-Namma (2012-2095) vary in style, thematic content, redactional history,
and in distribution between cities of origin as well as places from which
they were recovered (Klein 1981). Currently we know of seven or nine such
texts; the count depends on whether we view some of them as independent
compositions or as different versions of the same poem. All of them are
known from Old Babylonian copies, but one hymn (Ur-Namma B) is now attested
on an Ur III tablet from Nippur (Civil 1985), making it the oldest attested
representative of the genre. The one text about this king that was most
widely distributed was a long poem describing his death, burial, and journey
to the netherworld (Kramer 1991). The relatively numerous hymns of Shulgi,
which deal with cultic as well as military events, are very much concerned
with the multifaceted persona of a charismatic divine king. By contrast,
no hymns have survived from the problematical reign of his successor Amar-Su’ena
(Michalowski 1977). The poets working for the next king of the dynasty,
Shu-Sin, seem to have contributed primarily erotic balbale’s to the hymnic
repertoire. Ibbi-Sin, the last sovereign of Ur, was celebrated in the literary
tradition only through a handful of divine hymns, and in a lamentation
over the fall of his city. The legitimization strategy of the succeeding
Isin dynasty included the claim of continuity with the Ur III rulers. This
ideological facet is most obvious in the hymns of the first king of Isin,
who had a hand in the fall of his former master Ibbi-Sin. Two long hymns,
currently incomplete (Sj` berg
1993, van Dijk 1978), are filled with unique martial details, including
the names of enemies, as well as with divine sanction for the king’s historical
role as the avenger of Sumer. A poem honoring Nisaba, the goddess of writing,
mentions him in one line only, but is structurally unique as well (Riesman
1876, Michalowski, forthcoming). The hymns of Ishme-Dagan (1953-1935),
the fourth ruler of the Isin dynasty cover a much wider cultic ground and
rival those of Shulgi in number and variety (Ludwig 1990, Tinney 1995).
Some of his hymns were copied with very short lines, suggesting that they
were originally inscribed on monuments (Tinney 1995); this once again blurs
the distinction we make between genres such as royal inscriptions, law
codes, and hymns. There are definite diachronic developments in royal hymnography
that require further study. The basic stock of Ur III hymns that were preserved
and adapted for school use was apparently periodically sifted and augmented
with contemporary or recent compositions. For ideological reasons that
still elude us, some of the Isin kings vied with Shulgi for attention of
students: Lipit-Eshtar and Ishme-Dagan, and, to a lesser degree Iddin-Dagan.
The Larsa dynasty may have patronized a somewhat different literature,
with ornate stylistic developments as well as generic changes. This can
be seen in all surviving text types, in royal inscriptions, hymns, and
in the letter-prayers, which seem to have almost taken the place of royal
hymns as an important form of royal glorification. At the same time, many
Ur III hymns may have been discarded from the curriculum. Hardly any of
the items listed in the one Ur III catalog of royal hymns that has survived
can be identified among the Old Babylonian school texts (Hallo 1963a).

This modern classification of these poems into "royal", "divine." Etc.,
is undoubtedly flawed and has been subject to much criticism, but no other
coherent scheme has been devised and this is hardly the place for such
an undertaking (Klein 1981, Riesman 1969, Edzard 1994). The native terms
that are found in connection with the hymns vary in meaning, but most of
them appear to have originated as names of musical instruments. These terms
are usually found in subscripts to individual texts, as in, for example
a-da-ab dnin-urta, presumably meaning "an adab-type composition
to the god Ninurta." Since adab is the name of a musical instrument, one
could be tempted to view the subscript as a reference to accompaniment,
but there are passages that indicate some native generic meaning of the
term. A hymn known at present as Shulgi E (J. Klein, forthcoming) is an
elaborate celebration of the Ur III ruler’s patronage of the art of literary
composition. The king demands that his adab, tigi, malgatum, shirgida,
shumundu, kungar, balbale, gigid and zamzam songs—designations attested
in subscripts of surviving hymns—never pass from human memory, and be performed
in temples and at festivals forever. The notion that hymns were composed
in part in order to immortalize kings among future literate servants of
the crown is echoed many years later in a poem of the Isin king Lipit-Eshtar
(Vanstiphout 1978:39):

"Your praise shall never disappear from the clay (tablets) in the School
So that the scribes may sing your glory,
And glorify you magnificently.
Your adulation shall never cease in the School!"

The final rubrics of these hymns describe them in a number of ways.
Three such designations are synonymous with the names of musical instruments:
adab, tigi, and zami. A small number of hymns are described as particular
forms of "song" (ÓX
r), such as "song of heroism" (ÓX
r nam-ur-sag-g< , Iddin-Dagan
A); still others have uncertain descriptions such as ulaluma (Ishme-Dagan
D). Six hymns from the Ur and Isin dynasties are depicted as "dialogues"
(balbale). Erotic poems about the divine lovers Inanna and Dumuzi are also
designated in this manner, and some of the royal hymns concerning Shu-Sin
celebrate his union with his wife.

Many of these types have no discernable characteristic structural features,
while others exhibit different degrees of organizational complexity. The
tigi, a divine hymn which may or may not incorporate a royal blessing,
usually consists of two sections, labeled as sa gR
d-da and sa gar-ra and the latter is followed by a short giÓ
-gi4-g< l. The
meanings of these words are unclear; some would interpret them as musical
terms with meanings such as "long string," "settled string," and "antiphon."
The far more common a-da-ab is addressed to a god or goddess and incorporates
a blessing of the king. It is structurally more complex. In some examples
the hymns open with one or more bar-sud and ÓB
-ba-tuku sections, followed by the sa gR
d-da and sa gar-ra, each with its own giÓ
-gi4-g< l, and
end with a short section labeled uru-bi. Scholars differ on the translation
of these terms; some of them, such as the ones that begin with sa, "string,"
appear to have musical or performative connotations, while others are simply
types of refrains.

The narrative content of the royal hymns is extremely varied. Some celebrate
the dedication of cultic objects such as chariots, others describe the
supernatural birth of kings, their coronation, their military prowess against
enemies real and imaginary, or even their canal constructions. All of this
is couched in highly poetic language, with a broad range of metaphors that
express a wide variety of charismatic royal attributes, ranging from justice
and wisdom to fertility and even to patronage of the arts and writing.
One well-known hymn that was widely used in scribal training describes
how Shulgi ran from Ur to Nippur and back in a single day, through rain
and storm, and celebrated festivals in both cities (Shulgi A, Klein 1981).

Royal Prayers

The category of prayers is, once again, a modern one, and an ill-defined
one at that. It is often not apparent which Sumerian compositions should
be listed under this label, and the texts described in this section are
often grouped with the royal hymns. Hallo (1970:119) writes of a category
of royal prayers, labeled as Ój
d-dP dingir with the characteristic
ending RN lugal-mu, "Oh RN, my king!" It has been suggested by Charpin
(1986) that these particular texts (Gadd and Kramer 1963 nos. 102-106)
were not part of scribal training but were actually one-off compositions
used on the occasion of a visit by king Rim-Sin to Ur. The issue is somewhat
complicated by the existence of a fragmentary duplicate from Nippur to
one of these texts, but the suggestion remains a good one. The issue may
be more historical than structurally generic. The "prayers" that have the
"RN lugal-mu" ending are all relatively late, from the time of the dynasties
of Larsa and Babylon; indeed, they seem to take the place of the standard
hymns in this period. The earliest may be an unpublished exemplar from
the reign of Sin-iddinam (Hallo 19: 96). Other members of this group may
include the Rim-Sin compositions referred to above, as well as texts addressed
to Hammurapi (de Genouillac 1930 no. 61 and perhaps de Genouillac 1924/5
B 11) and Samsu-iluna (the two texts inscribed on de Genouillac 1930 no.
43, and the composition edited by Sj`
berg 1973). With one exception, none of these texts was found at Nippur
and it is quite possible that they represent practical cultic texts that
had not been included in the school curriculum of Old Babylonian times.
Nevertheless, royal hymns of a more traditional type continued to be composed
as late as the reign of Abi-eshuh (1711-1684 B.C.), one of the last kings
of the First Dynasty of Babylon (van Dijk 1966).

Divine Hymns

As is the case with all the other traditional categories surveyed in
this section, Sumerian language hymns to gods and goddesses are preserved
almost exclusively in Old Babylonian copies. An unpublished Ur III tablet
with a hymn to Nisaba as well as a few other pieces provide evidence for
the earlier existence of this kind of text. The broad modern category of
"divine hymn" is merely a convenient label to cover many different kinds
of poetic texts concerning deities that do not mention a royal name.

There is no discernable pattern in the way in which certain deities
were remembered in the hymnic tradition. Over thirty gods and goddesses
are the subject of praise in the close to one hundred and forty "divine
hymns" that are currently known. The sky god An, head of the pantheon,
is absent from this list, while relatively minor deities such as Lisina,
Lulal, or Ninimma, have their place. Enlil, the most prominent deity of
Sumer is the subject of one important hymn that was widely copied, since
it is attested in approximately seventy different manuscripts from Nippur,
Ur, Kish, Sippar, and other sites (Riesman 1969). There is another fragment
that may belong to an Enlil hymn (G2—
, K2 z2
yay, and Kramer 1969: 57), but otherwise the cultic hymns of this all-important
god were not incorporated into the school tradition.

The formal native subscripts are similar to those found in the royal
hymns, but here are important differences in the relative proportion of
different types. Thus, while among the royal hymns adabs predominated,
followed in number by the tigi, these are relatively uncommon without mention
of a king; six such ruler-less examples of each are known at present. Other
types represented by similar small numbers are designated as ÓX
r-nam-Ó ub (8 texts),
ÓX
r-gR d-da (7), ÓX
r-namgala (5), ulalama (2), kungar (1) and possibly ÓX
r-ÓB -hd
l-la (1). Somewhat more numerous are hymns that end simply with the "praise"
(zB -mR
) of the deity, although in some cases the subject of the hymn is celebrated
in the last line, but the praise is reserved for another deity. Fully a
quarter, more than 27 hymns are designated as bal-bal-e, a word often translated
as "dialog." Almost a half of these concern the goddess Inanna, most often
in tandem with her lover Dumuzi. Other deities who are celebrated in this
manner are Ba’u, Nanshe, Ninshubur, Ninkasi, Ninazi, Ningizida, Nanna,
Ninurta, and Shara; the association of the balbale form with Inanna might
suggest that this type of texts was predominantly linked to goddesses,
but the distribution is roughly equal for both genders. The picture changes
somewhat when we add to this the erotic balbale’s that mention the Ur III
ruler Shu-Sin. The numbers provided above are approximate; here are often
problems of attribution when the latter part of a tablet is broken. Indeed,
many divine hymns are known only in fragmentary state, and it is possible
that, had the subscripts been preserved on all of them, our proportions
might look very different. On the other hand, there is some question as
to the original context and classification of such texts, as evidenced
by the overlap between compositions that have traditionally been labeled
as hymns and those that have been designated as incantations (Michalowski
1993).

In contradistinction with the royal hymns, which seem to have been completely
purged from the literary canon following the Old Babylonian period, a few
Sumerian divine hymns are found in later libraries. Two Ninurta hymns are
OB and first millennium bilingual versions (Wilcke 1976: , Lambert 1960:
118-120 [with unpublished Nippur duplicate]). One Nergal text is known
from a Middle Babylonian bilingual version from the Hittite capital of
Boghazk` y as well as from
a later first millennium version from the Assyrian Niniveh (Borger 1973:47-50).
In addition to these and a handful of other older divine hymns, the first
millennium libraries included a few bilingual texts concerning gods and
goddesses that were composed at this late date. Chief among these is the
Exaltation
of Inanna/Ishtar (HruÓ
ka 1969).

Letters

Old Babylonian school children copied a number of Sumerian language
letters as part of the medium to advanced part of their education (Hallo
1981). From a formal point of view, the Sumerian literary correspondence
has been divided into two categories: letters and letter-prayers (Hallo
1968). The former are prose texts characterized by an opening formula that
reads: "Speak to so-and-so (or: his majesty), thus says so-and-so (attributes)(your
servant):." The latter are poetic compositions that begin with a more complex
formula. The addressee is either a deity or a king and the opening lines
often contain a long list of epithets; these are interrupted by three formulaic
phrases: "speak," "say furthermore," and "say for the third time." This
is then followed, as in the prose versions, with "thus says so-and-so (attributes)(your
servant)." The length of the epithets, and of the whole opening section,
varies substacially in texts from different periods. Generally speaking,
this section, as well as the main argument of the letter-prayers becomes
longer with time; texts of Ur III origin are relatively short, while later
compositions from Larsa and Mari are much longer and more verbose.

Approximately 55 Sumerian literary letters are known today. Almost half
of them (22) belonged to the royal correspondence of Ur, which was never
grouped together as a standardized collection. There was one such assortment,
which included around 17 miscellaneous texts, including letters, and which
now goes under the label "Letter Collection B," although we are now certain
that it was not preceded by any "Collection A." There are, in addition,
approximately 15 other such letters. Old Babylonian Sumerian language literary
letters have been found in Nippur, Ur, Isin, Uruk, Ischiali, Susa, in Kish,
and probably in Sippar. Unprovenienced manuscripts from modern museums
suggest a wider dissemination. A Middle Babylonian tablet with three letters
was discovered in the Iranian city of Susa. A version of one of the last
collection B letters circulated in the West in the latter half of the second
millennium, and was also known in first millennium Assur, while a letter-prayer
of Sin-iddinam, was also copied in the late Assyrian libraries (Hallo 1982,
Borger, forthcoming). These post-Old Babylonian versions contain the Sumerian
text, accompanied by Akkadian language translations. Not all the known
letters can be reconstructed fully, but it appears that the actual corpus
that we have appears to be close to complete. A broken literary catalog
from Uruk lists thirty letters; only four of these cannot be identified
at present (Cavigneaux 1996:57-59). Two further unknown letters are mentioned
in still another such catalog, of unknown provenience (Michalowski 1991).

Collection B (Ali 1964) consisted of twenty, sometimes more, short compositions,
the majority of which were letters and letter-prayers. It also contained
an announcement of the loss of a seal, votive inscriptions, and a chronicle
of kings who rebuilt the Tummal complex of the goddess Ninlil. The unifying
element of the collection is the Nippur locale, and it is likely that,
with the exception of the Tummal text and four letters from the correspondence
of the court of Isin, all these compositions originated in the Ur III period.
The lost seal announcement is crucial for the dating of these texts; among
the witnesses is a governor of Nippur who is known to have held the office
during the reign of Amar-Sin of Ur. Another witness in this composition
can be linked to letter B19, and this in turn provides connections and
synchronisms with persons in other "B" texts. Many of the persons mentioned
in this collection were very likely leading teachers in the Nippur schools,
including Enlil-alsa, who is specifically named as "the Nippur schoolmaster,"
and who is sometimes referred to by his nickname zuzu, "learned." One should
not exclude the possibility that they concocted these texts for practical
school use, but also managed to assure their own literary immortality.
The contents of the texts in this collection range from the tragic to the
prosaic. The opening text, in most versions of the collection, is a letter-prayer
to king Shulgi from one Aba-indasa, who begs to be reinstated to his former
official position. The petitioner is a military man also known from at
least three fragmentary prose royal letters. The next four texts constitute
the Royal Correspondence of Isin; two exchanges between kings Iddin-Dagan
and Lipit-Eshtar with high military officers about conflicts with the kingdom
of Larsa concerning water rights (Rowton 1968). Thereupon follow three
letter-prayers, perhaps better described as letters of petition, to a king,
asking for general favors. Item B8 is the history of the Tummal, which
is followed by two, or in some recensions by three simple letters concerning
water works and agricultural matters (Civil 1994: 277-184). The collection
then moves on to a legal text concerning the loss of the seal of a merchant
by the name of Ur-dun, possibly the same man who also wrote a letter to
king Shulgi. Still other non-epistolary items are a copy of an inscription
on a votive dog dedicated to Nintinuga, the goddess of healing (B17), and,
in some redactions, of a copy of a text on a votive axe dedicated to the
god Nergal (Behrens 1988). The rest of Collection B consists of letters
and letter-prayers of the Nippur educational elite. The final epistle,
written by one Inim-Inanna to Lugal-ibila, concerns school matters. This
letter was the only one of this group to survive past the Old Babylonian
period, and a bilingual version was studied at the Hittite capital of Hattushash,
at Ugarit, and in still later times in Assur (Nougayrol et al.1968: 23-28).

The largest group of Sumerian literary letters consists of a group of
more than twenty-two compositions, collectively known as Royal Correspondence
of Ur (RCU, Michalowski 1976, 1981). Most of them belong to the correspondence
between king Shulgi and his highest officials; one exchange of missives
was ascribed to his second successor Shu-Sin, and four to Ibbi-Sin, the
man who took over after than ruler’s death, and during whose reign the
kingdom collapsed. The persons and events depicted in these compositions
appear, at first glance, to fit well into the time of the Third Dynasty
of Ur. If these letters have an authentic core, however, it is clear that
they have been substantially altered to conform to the grammatical orthographic
norms of Old Babylonian Sumerian. Some of the Shulgi hymns retain certain
features of older spelling and morphology, although it is impossible to
judge if this is an archaism or a genuine reflection of the originals that
were used as a base for the later copies. No such features can be identified
in the copies of the royal letters. We have reason to doubt the authenticity
of some of them, such as the preposterous missive from Shulgi to Ishbi-Erra,
who lived a generation apart, which was clearly concocted from pieces of
other letters. The same may be true of a short letter of Ur-dun to Shulgi,
known only on one exemplar from an unknown site, which likewise incorporates
familiar phraseology. The Ibbi-Sin letters are preserved in two redactions.
Versions from outside of Nippur, possibly from northern Babylonia contain
additional passages that differ markedly in phraseology and tone from the
rest of the text; these were almost certainly added in Old Babylonian times.
Since we cannot distinguish with certainty the authenticity of most of
the letters, nor the degree to which they were rewritten in the course
of literary transmission, one has to be extremely careful when using them
as historical, rather than as historiographic, sources.

With these strictures in mind, one must also state that much of the
narrative of these texts reflects well what we know of the political situation
in Ur III times. Almost all the individuals who are named in the RCU can
be identified in contemporary administrative records. Among these one might
mention Arad-mu, also called Arad-Nanna, the chancellor of the state, high
officials such as Apillasha, Lu-Nanna, Babati, or Sharrum-bani, as well
as the rulers themselves. The main topic of this correspondence is the
defense of the realm against incursions of hostile Amorites from the northeastern
marches of the empire. The letters between Shulgi and Arad-mu concern the
general state of the empire and of the eastern border regions. Some of
the chancellor’s letters are summary reports, others are more detailed
and concern specific affairs such as problems with a border war-lord Apillasha,
or with the career of the already mentioned Abaindasa. Another official
of the realm, Puzur-Shulgi, writes to the king about the fortifications
he was charged with building against the Amorites, who were attacking from
the northeast. In the RCU these are called Bad-igi-hursanga, "Fortifications
against the highlands." This is undoubtedly the same construction that
was mentioned in the formula used to date the thirty-seventh year of Shulgi’s
reign, which reads: "The Year that (the god) Nanna and king Shulgi built
the Wall of the Land."

The rebuilding of these fortifications is the subject of the two letters
exchanged between king Shu-Sin and the special commissioner Sharrum-bani.
The latter was appointed in charge of the defense line, but did not live
up to the king’s expectations, and so he was replaced by Babati, well known
from Ur III sources as the uncle of the ruler. The fortifications were
now named in Akkadian as Muriq-Tidnim. "The One that Keeps the Tidnum people
(an Amorite tribal name) at a Distance," as we learn from the fourth year-name
of Shu-Sin.

The quartet of missives from the chancery of Ibbi-Sin, the last member
of the dynasty, provides dramatic vignettes from the complex events that
led to the downfall of Ur. One exchange highlights the betrayal of king
by Ishbi-Erra, an officer whom he had sent north to purchase grain for
the beleaguered capitol. The man obtained the grain, but demanded to be
paid for it once again, and, in a bold move demanded to be given charge
over two of the major cities of Sumer: Nippur and Isin. When we next hear
of Ishbi-Erra in the historical record, Ur has fallen, and a new power
center has arisen at Isin, under his rule. These events find an echo in
the other pair of Ibbi-Sin letters, exchanged with Puzur-Shulgi, the governor
of the northern Babylonian frontier town of Kazallu. The largely isolated
official tells the king that he can barely hold on to his power and that
he will not be able to hold out against the coming attack from Ishbi-Erra,
who is now firmly in power at Isin. Ibbi-Sin answers him in high rhetorical
terms, urging him to stay firm, since all of these events are in the hands
of the gods. They have punished Sumer for past iniquities by handing over
power to the man at Isin, but they have also sent omens to the rightful
king at Ur, predicting the downfall of his rival. Here the royal correspondence
ends, but the Old Babylonian reader, privileged with hindsight, knew well
what the denouement was. Interestingly, the Ibbi-Sin letters were sometimes
grouped together on one tablet, resulting in a continuous narrative that
could be described, somewhat anachronistically, as a rudimentary form of
the epistolary novel.

The Old Babylonian schools used very few prose letters written after
the fall of the Ur III state. There is a fragment of a letter of Iter-pi-sha,
a minor later member of the Isin dynasty, and there may even have been
one written to Sumu-la-el, a founder of the First Dynasty of Babylon. It
is most probable that these were school inventions, as there is no evidence
for the use of the Sumerian language for everyday correspondence after
the reign of Lipit-Eshtar of Isin. The end of the letter did not bring
with it the end of the poetic letter-prayer. To the contrary, this type
of composition seems to have been in vague among the Larsa scribes, and
the school tradition seems to have favored the texts composed during the
reigns of Sin-iddinam and Rim-Sin. The former left behind a copy of a monumental
inscription that includes two embedded letter-prayers to the Utu (van Dijk
1965). This is important for two reasons: it demonstrates once again the
fragility of our generic categorizations and at the same time provides
a glimpse of the original, non-educational, use of poetic letters. According
to the Sin-iddinam text, the tablets with petitions were placed directly
in front of the cult statue of the deity, who, one assumes, could read
it without difficulty (Hallo 1968: 79, 1976:211). How the gods responded
is not known. Slightly later Akkadian texts show us that they could write
back on occasion (Ellis 1987), and letters from divinities to kings are
known from the first millennium. The combination of a statue inscription
and two letter-prayers on one tablet once again demonstrates that our classification
of Sumerian compositions is based on different sets of criteria for different
forms. Royal inscriptions are defined by their primary context: they are
monumental texts. Poems of various kinds, including the kinds we have discussed
here, hymns and letter-prayers, are categorized according to their secondary
lives when they were chosen for preservation, copied, and adapted for Old
Babylonian school instruction.

The last two Sumerian letter-prayers are among the most elaborate of
the genre; they are almost contemporary, albeit from very different parts
of the Near East. The first was addressed by Nin-shata-pada, an educated
princess of Uruk who had been appointed as high priestess of the southern
city of Durum, to Rim-Sin, the king of nearby Larsa (Hallo 1991). This
fifty-eight line poetic letter mixes praise of the king with pleas of mercy
for the author, who has clearly suffered in wake of Rim-Sin’s conquest
of Sumer. The second is a somewhat longer poetic letter of petition written
by Zimri-Lim, king of the Syrian city of Mari (Charpin 1992). The name
of the sycophantic scribe who created the text is not preserved, but he
was clearly on the outs with the ruler, and wished to impress him with
his rhetorical skill and mastery of his craft. The bilingual letter was
carefully crafted to demonstrate a virtuosic command of both the Akkadian
and Sumerian languages. The somewhat stilted rhetoric reflects the influence
of current Larsa literary letters. These and other Larsa dynasty exemplars
contrast in size and stylistic elaboration with the relatively short and
more laconic specimens from the Ur III period.

The tradition of composing Sumerian language poetic letters of petition
died out towards the end of the Old Babylonian period. At this same time
we begin to see Akkadian language prose letters to divinities, although
these are not school texts, but actual letters to gods. Although there
were a few Akkadian school practice letters at this time (Michalowski 1983),
there is, at present, only one elaborate Old Babylonian epistle that could
be considered a "literary letter." This is a missive from king Samsu-iluna
to various high officials in the subdivisions of the city of Sippar that
has been found in at least four duplicates (Jannsen 1991); unless the letter
was originally sent in multiple copies, this epistle may have entered the
scribal curriculum at the time. The scribes of the latter part of the second
millennium and from first millennium Assyria and Babylonia copied older
royal letters, and even composed new fictions in this form, including a
missive from Gilgamesh and an elaborate historiographic text that was until
recently known as the Weidner Chronicle. It now turns out that this was
a letter, purportedly written by an Old Babylonian king of Babylon to a
King of Isin (Al-Rawi 1990). The letter circulated in Akkadian, but at
least one manuscript was written as a Sumerian and Akkadian bilingual (Finkel
1980). In this form it joined the Sin-iddinam letter-prayer to Utu, the
only old poetic petition to have survived the end of the Old Babylonian
period, as the last vestiges of the Sumerian letter-prayers. The literary
letter of petition was not dead, however. Sometime during the last decades
of the Assyrian empire, a scribe by the name of Urad-Gula composed a long,
immensely elaborate example of such a composition to he king, most likely
Assur-banipal, full of allusions and quotations from literary texts (Parpola
1987). Although later schoolboy copies of royal correspondence are known,
this text is the last grand example of the Mesopotamian literary letter
tradition.

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Gadd, C.. J.
1931 Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the
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